This review of research on using games to teach brings out the following points:
1) If it is possible to "win" an educational game without learning, 3rd-5th-grade students will learn less than if taught traditionally, playing in a "rapid, repetitive, mindless fashion."
2)If a learning task is set in the context of a story, whether or not the students prefers that story to the others available, the student will learn more. Students preferred story-context problems to unembellished ones.
3) Students offered an extrinsic reward for finding the correct answer were less effective at problem-solving and less confident.